2010-11-04

Context Replacement as a Creative Act

Gunnar Sandin, Architecture, CCS

The main idea of the presentation is that the disciplinary contexts in which we position, communicate and measure originality are fundamental for how originality,and thus also creativity, is generally sensed, measured or defined. It is claimed that it is the representational situation itself that makes an original thought discernible in the first place. By acknowledging the semiotic notion of “auto-communication” as a “creative function of a text” (Lotman) as well as the kind of cultural semiotics in which the point-of-view of one culture decides whether other cultures are to be regarded as “text, extra-text, or non-text” (Sonesson), we arrive at semiotic views needed to argue for a shift-of-context as a creative act in itself. These semiotic aspects can further be discussed in relation to the understanding of contextual shifts in the fashion of attention psychology (Arvidson), where various types of contextual alteration – like enlargement, contraction, elucidation, obscuration, and replacement – are viewed as changing the thematic focus of the phenomenon perceived.